I was catching an X-ray tan
on my planet
(planet that is
exclusively mine and
mine alone)

when news of your film reached me, Mr Kubrick, and
I did long for a screening
for you
to tear away the shutters from
my black box of light

doing stuff to my head
that the row of gray-haired executives who left the theatre in droves
before the Clavius Moonbase, let alone
Voyage to Jupiter
could never understand, no matter
how many monoliths
descended on them

two birds without feathers (one more bird than the other)
clamped together under bag of feathers
trying to
get the old machinery to
humour us

to work (and there, just mentioning
labour we see
Marx and his much German progeny
speculating at the window
hard
to make out whether it is (Mum’s the word)
mode critical analysis or mode standing ovation).

I shall not tell her (or the man whose face she has rented )
how rough your nights are,
how your dreams
fail to set sail, never
learnt to fly
are set in
places that this
essentially landlocked, desiccated, dry.

Tomorrow the sun
will steal up upon us, having already decided
whether to play generous despot of heat and light
or raging tyrant, determined to kill us
with temperatures that
soar

but at least something soars: I see
the swat seeping through your dress, and
with it
the outline of your breasts

and wonder if we
shall ever soar, take flight,
perform a range of manoeuvres to
astound the world with the
bravado of our
aerobatics